big fat sand =)

My favorite sandwich lately here has been generous amounts of homemade hummus (Creamy Hummus from Vive le Vegan!), cucumber, avocado, spinach, and Dijon.  So good, filling, and quick to prepare, after you've made the hummus.  This week was the first time I used dried beans to make hummus (so much cheaper, no cans, etc.  We have been using Eden beans for years (no BPA in the can lining), but this is better financially and it's fun.  It does however take a bit of planning ahead of time, I ended up having to wake up in the night to put the cooled beans in the fridge ;)  they had just gotten done cooking at bedtime.  I used the instructions from an Eden foods catalog:  rinse beans 3 times with cold water, soak beans covered in cold water by 3-4 inches (the beans will get bigger) for 7-8 hours, drain and cover again with cold water by 4 inches or so in a pan, add a piece of kombu, bring to boil and simmer for about 1 1/2 hours until beans are tender (you may need to add more water), ours were perfect at an hour and a half, remove kombu, and let cool and refrigerate. 





Thanks to Angela at Oh She Glows I made one of our new favorite dinners.  Check out this recipe for butternut squash mac n cheeze!  I have it bookmarked on the computer and have made it a few times since, so good!  When I found the recipe I had some leftover cooked (cubed on the stove in water) kabocha squash from the night before and used that.  I've also used pumpkin, but the kabocha was my fav.  I stirred in some frozen peas at the end of course ;)

stirring the squash into the cheeze sauce



delectable dinner =)



Lots of protein smoothies here lately too:

water/unsweetened almond milk
2 bananas
fruit (berries, oranges, or mango, etc.)
greens
spirulina
avocado (want a creamy shake?  put in an avocado, mmm!)
dates



And some food photos from the summer...

fresh organic asparagus!  some raw in salads, some steamed for dinner



with nut butter carrot and parsnip fries 



collards and rice seasoned with these two.



I love trying new hummus recipes...what is your favorite recipe?

Good Frosty Morning =)

Good Morning from a frosty Michigan!  We're starting to get some colder weather and had a beautiful burst of blowing snow yesterday for our second snow fall of the year, no accumulation yet, which is just fine, we have some long cold winters here!

This week I went to visit my Momma for the day and night for a girls sleepover and packed some sustinance for my trip.  First I totally enjoyed this green juice sitting in the sun. 

Organic juice of:
romaine
cucumber
spinach
ginger
apple
orange



I made the Broccoli Salad from The Cancer Survivor's Guide to Foods That Help you Fight Back.  (I am not ill, but I think this book is wise).  It's really simple to make, I did leave out the sugar the recipe calls for because I don't think it needs it. 



Mom and I pretty much devoured this for lunch and dinner!



This was my dinner plate:  broccoli salad, boiled organic beets (yum!), raw cauliflower with raw curry pate dip, brown rice and quinoa mix from Seeds of Change (we did not heat in the bag).  It was delicious, awesome foods =) 



In the morning I started off with an organic green protein smoothie that I had packed:

2 fresh bananas
unsweetened almond milk
frozen peaches
fresh spinach
1 tsp spirulina
2 pitted dates
splash of almond extract
2 scoops of Raw protein powder



for my back log of photos I found these from Hubby and I's dinner for my birthday in May this summer.  We went to Jazzy Veggie downtown Ann Arbor for a vegan dinner that is always so tasty. 

Hubby had the potstickers



and the sausage n peppers hoagie



we shared their delicious baked sweet pot fries



I had what I pretty much always choose, the sweet potato quinoa burger. 



Here I am turning 33.



We walked around town after and stopped into Schakolad for a piece of chocolate.  They have a nice few options of vegan chocolate.  I believe these were coconut, MI cherry, and PB.  The guy working keep giving me free pieces once he found out it was my BD ;) 



and this was the sky on our drive home, gorgeous.  I'm a lucky girl. 

raw tortilla chips!

I was so excited to finally make these raw corn tortilla chips from Everyday Raw.  I won this book last year and have yet to make any of the recipes in it, but I knew when I first looked through it that the tortillas were what I wanted to try first.  So finally it was time...after I was fearful hubby was going to turn into a corn chip from eating so many (we usually have the Kirkland organic ones, which are yummy and fried), but I wanted him to snack freely on something he loves so much, he eats them plain, blech!, maybe I could make it a bit quite a bit healthier for him, and being reinspired after lunching with a girlfriend at Red Pepper Deli where we had their raw chips with avocado and pico. 



frozen, thawed organic corn, onion, spices, water



stirring it all together with the flax meal



2 or 3 days later ;)  I am still becoming proficient with spreading chips really thin on the dehydrator sheets so I let them dry extra until they were nice and crispy.  I dried 30 mins. then scored into chips, then dried maybe 24 hours, moved to mesh trays to finish to our crunchy desires.  We both really like them (and these I can eat plain!) lots of flavor and good crunch.  Have you all made raw corn chips? 



A couple nights ago I made (along with our staple big salads) these quinoa and bean sloppy joes that a friend posted the recipe link for on Facebook.  I really like making these, they are a good protein meal, easy and quick, and sometimes it's fun to eat a sandwich, something we don't make much of here.  Here's the recipe link.    They make great leftovers too inside romaine leaves for lunches.  We sadly didn't have any ripe red peppers this time so I used extra toms, and made tom sauce out of opened paste and water, and used our favorite bean the aduki/adzuki bean instead of pinto.  We like to top them with relish and yelllow mustard on a Rudi's wheat bun.  So good and comforting, especially when it gets chilly here!



Now that I have gRawnola made my mornings have consisted of this at some point.  Cultured almond milk and granola.  yum, yum, yum!





I am pretty excited to try the new Greek style coconut milk yogurts when I find them!

We have a new coffee mug that we are digging by Klean Kanteen.  We got the insulated 16 oz mug and the cafe top.  The cafe top comes apart for thorough cleaning, is BPA free, however it is not leakproof.  We've only had it a few days, so I have yet to use it myself, but hubby loves it, washing it is a breeze, and now I have two to rotate sending to work with him since two of our other SS insulted mugs have been left other places :/ 





We ordered from REI since our local stores don't seem to stock them and I had a gift certificate as part of a massage tip=)  Did you know they'll ship to your local store for free?  cool deal right? one of the many things we love about REI.  Also, while I was there picking up our mug I saw that they had Pure bars.  I picked up my favorite blueberry and the cranberry orange to try.  Trader Joe's here always has just the same two flavors that happen to not be my favs. 



and for the photos from days past...

we have delicious wheatgrass with half a haircut



and Maggie protecting hers ;)



Hope the sun is shining where you are today, thanks for reading!

Happy Halloween/Samhain!

Happy Halloween, well the day after.  Hope everyone had a fun time and not too many sugar hangover headaches this morning!  Fruit leathers are what we handed out this year to our trick or treaters.  We found them in boxes of 48 at Costco.  We had just under100, a bit less than usual, and I think the most common costume here was the green lantern ;)



I have been searching for this nog, had a major craving for it!  We found it this weekend at Plum Market, thought I was going to sing in the store.  The mint chocolate is yummy, but the nog is SO yummy.  I don't know if I've ever had traditional eggnog, but as a kid I loved this mix that my grandparent's had that you could stir granules into a glass of milk for instant eggnog anytime of the year.  Hubby made a big mug of warmed nog, almond milk, and a few chocolate chips last night as it was a little chilly greeting the kiddos. 



We've been enjoying big salads made with organic local spinach varieties, red peppers and tomatoes from our garden, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts. 



We had our first hard frost this past week, a couple days before it happened I felt it coming and gathered up our green toms and peppers that are now ripening up nicely in the window =) 



I've made a couple of recipes from Vive le Vegan recently.  One of them is the Creamy Poppyseed Dressing that is awesome!  It calls for soft tofu, but I subbed the same amount of raw cashews instead to keep it raw and it worked perfect, just adding a bit of water for blending. 

poppyseeds are so pretty.



We have a couple of these bamboo ladles from pampered chef that work so well for dressing salads. 



The other recipe is for her Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies, which are always delish.  This was our sweet treat for the holiday since we don't buy candy.



Has anyone tried the new organic olive oils that Whole Foods has now?  We have tried this one and I have to say it is really flavorful and nice.  One thing you miss when you've been to Italy is the flavorful olive oil.



Our backlog photos of the day are of our quick pickles we made this summer. 





We used this recipe for Icebox Pickles from Earthmother.  They were soooo good, very apple cider vinegary, which we love.  Hope our cucumbers are more productive next year for making more pickles!  Hubby and I love our pickles. 

Strawberry Chia Milk!

I remember seeing a post with a recipe on The Raw Food World's Facebook page and thought it sounded so good for strawberry chia milk.  Growing up 'pink milk' was one of my favorite treats, I loved to dunk my pb&js in it, seriously was there anything better?  My strawberry milk then was made by stirring pink Quik into a glass of milk and I'm sure that I used extra ;)  This is a decidely healthier real strawberry milk without any of the little blue specks.  Anyone else remember those?  I always wondered why there was blue in it and what it was, now I know;)  So, anyway here is the link to the recipe.  I made some changes so I'll give you the recipe I came up with.

2 cups unsweetened almond milk (not raw)
2 T organic chia seeds
3 T raisin soak water (I had been soaking raisins for pudding)
2 medjool dates, pitted
scant 2 cups of frozen organic strawberries (what we had left)
splash of organic fairtrade vanilla extract



blending away, isn't it pretty?



2 servings, one went with me on a bank errand and the other is for a treat today =)



This milk is really delicious, very creamy and sweet.  If you want it a little less sweet, leave out the dates and see how you like it. 



Thank you Raw Food World for sharing your recipe, their site is a great place to order your chias from, it's where we first got ours when I was chia curious ;) 

Onto dinner last night, this rice bowl sounded perfect (and we had all the ingredients on hand) that I found on Happy Foody while starting to catch up on blog reading yesterday. 

changes I made:
used collards as the green (are garden is abundant yet =)
I skipped Nori (ours is expired, not sure if that's ok or not...) and used dulse flakes instead
added chopped red pepper, we had a little late crop in the garden =)
used raw agave as the sweetener
used ACV as well

using our little frozen chunks of aging ginger (it's so much easier to grate this way too) to make the delicious dressing. 



microplanes rock



dressing ready



juilenned collards fresh from the garden



stir them into your brown rice when it is ready



top with all your goodies and dress, the cucumber really added a nice fresh crunch to this bowl,  Adding beans would also be great. 



For a treat last night I had made these Winter Squash Muffins with leftover bnut squash from dinner this week.  I used 2 mashed bananas as my eggs and they turned out great, very moist and a nice treat with chocolate chips ;)  I actually ended up eating my dessert before dinner while I was getting dinner prepared, sometimes that happens here. 



While I was in the garden getting greens I picked what will be the last of our tomatoes this year.  These will ripen up nicely in the kitchen window. 



A new favorite Theo bar is this salted almond!  Our WF rarely carries different flavors, I was very excited to find this on sale. 



and for back log photos of the day:  Mom had made a surprise visit to see me on my birthday back in the end of May...it was nice and sunny and I was out on a day off soaking up the sun and drinking some lemonade, not quite like today, haha. 







super easy lemonade recipe:  water, dates, and fresh lemons.  You'll want to remember this one for the summer, you can adjust your sweetness to your liking, we use less dates and more lemon for great tartness =)

The sun may not make it through the clouds today, so I have a day of organizing in order here. 
Take good care, xo